


Bright Dead Things

by rainstormcolors



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-10-17 05:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10587399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormcolors/pseuds/rainstormcolors
Summary: In the wake of Atem's departure, Seto Kaiba has difficulties handling and understanding his emotions. DSoD angst.





	1. Going & Coming

**Author's Note:**

> Named after a volume of poems by Ada Limon, because I fell in love with the title.

The prismatic blaze of the sun reflected on the sand was not an elegy. The swirled heat of the world was not a baptism. No, there was no poetry here as Yugi Mutou turned to face him, as Anzu Mazaki turned to face him, as Katsuya Jonouchi turned to face him, as one by one they all turned to face him. All those eyes meeting him, and there he was alone.

And then there was the memory from when he was eight years old. He and Mokuba had to get already for school but their father hadn’t left his bedroom. So Seto went to wake him but

He and Mokuba stepped back into the cockpit of their jet. Mokuba had asked him, “Are you okay?”  
And he answered, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

.

“ _Kaiba! I see your future! I see a road of battle that goes further than the eye can see!_ ”

“ _I’ve tried to tell you again and again, but until you listen you will never escape from the darkness._ ”

“ _The power of friendship._ ”  
It made Seto Kaiba want to puke.

.

“I didn’t think Kaiba-kun would show up. The Other—“ Yugi swallowed the pithy taste. “—Atem was kind of devastated when he never answered back…”  
“I was kind of surprised too,” Jonouchi said.  
Anzu was silent, stared into the glassy water, the ribbons of diamonds and light.  
Above them glittered the luminous splash of the Milky Way. Black water reflected the cosmic sky and the lavender light of the boat.  
“The stars sure are something out here,” Jonouchi said.  
Yugi made a small noise in agreement.  
And at every moment Yugi felt it like ice—the absence of the Millennium Puzzle. And the whole world was silent and lonely.

And so life moved.

.

The deep sea rumble, the deep sea pressure, the deep sea black. The colorless abyss and his chest vibrates with the frantic beats of a mercury heart. Beasts oozing and clawed creep out from the black and he can’t move. There’s no air. It's broiling. They're everywhere. His insides are broiling. Some eyeless shapeless creature bites into his arm, deep into his flesh. He screams, but the sound tangles as it escapes his throat. Deformed limbs, pale and spider-veined, wrap around his legs tightly. His heart wails: _thump thump thump_. And then suddenly there’s the gentle touch of hands. The hands move over his body as delicate as air. They touch his skin. From the calf, from the place between his legs, up to his chest. The monsters embed themselves into his flesh and his innards foam from the wounds. The hands place themselves upon his heart. Suddenly he is a ten-year-old child.  
“Kaiba.”  
Fingers dig into the cracks and the heart is shattered.

His eyes nearly spill from his head as he rips them open. He wakes up with a seizing of his body, inhaling deeply, sweat-drenched skin. He grabs at his chest, but whatever pain was there has dissolved away. The darkness is small and familiar now. The canopy, the bed. He breathes and breathes.  
The name falls from his lips and drops like a weight.  
“Yugi…”

The light inside the bathroom is lemon chiffon. He stands in the shower and the water and steam fall over him. It sounds like rain. The beads of water shine like small worlds on the panes of glass.

The windows are filled with night. He moves through the dark house, which itself could be a dreamscape for all the distortion and repressed drops of memory, and it’s as if he’s still underwater. He’s the only one awake, brought to life too early by the nightmare. He hasn’t had one like that since Death-T. From the massive kitchen’s refrigerator he pulls a large plastic bottle of apple juice and sips sweetness.

He goes to his home laboratory and tinkers with the numbers on a holographic screen, and his skin is stained glacier blue inside the pale light. He tinkers so he doesn’t have to think about the dream. But it isn’t working. Suddenly he rips off his headpiece as if to smash it with his fist into the desk, but his arm staggers to a stop, equipment still clutched in his grasp.  
Somewhere inside his computer is the email Yugi had sent him perhaps three weeks ago. “ _We found his true name. His name is Atem._ ” “ _It’d mean a lot to him if you came to say goodbye with us._ ” And a second email, sent two weeks ago: “ _Please consider coming._ ” They were emails he never answered.  
Seto drops the headpiece to his lap, bends it in his palms, mutters, “Stupid. I don’t care. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”  
The Other Yugi had left the world ten days ago.

“Nii-sama.”  
“Mokuba.”  
Mokuba stands in the doorway which is a sci-fi contraption, and he’s dressed in crisp business wear, his hair as black and glossy as a plum. Seto hadn’t noticed the time and this room has no windows. There’s only cords and abstract paintings and wall.  
“You’ve had breakfast?” Mokuba asks him.  
Seto gives a soft agreeing grunt, a lie.  
“We should get going then. I’m ready if you are.”  
“You go. I’ll work from here today.”  
Mokuba pauses. It’s a drawn out pause. “Well okay then. Have a good day.”  
“You too,” Seto says as he turns back to face the holographic screen, to polish the code of the Duel Links test model.  
Mokuba lingers in the doorway for a moment or two before backing away and the door slides shut.

The house is an architecture of marble, hardwoods, and autumn colors, with oil paintings, potted plants, and antique carved ivory. Unlit lamps like box crystals line the elegant walls and pearlescent light melts through the windows. Mokuba approaches the woman shining the glass, her hair bobbed, wearing a white laced apron and small white flower earrings.  
“Himeko-san.”  
Her attention turns to him. “Mokuba-sama.”  
“Would you make sure Nii-sama has a lunch for me today?” he asks warmly.  
She smiles to him and bows her head. “Of course, sir.”  
“Thanks.”

Mokuba had asked him, “Are you okay?”  
And he answered, “Why wouldn’t I be?”  
And Mokuba had thought, _You aren’t_.

.

Boys in blue jackets and blue trousers, girls in pink jackets and blue skirts, watery reflections moving over the linoleum floor. A prism of gold hangs from his neck and a black dog collar encircles his throat. Except there is no prism of gold. The space of his chest is empty. Yugi meets with his friends in the student-choked hallway: the boy with blonde hair, the boy with brown hair, and one with white hair fluffed as milkweed seed. The blondie swings his school bag.  
“Ah man, the homeroom teacher totally has it out for me now. Why is it always me?” Jonouchi groans.  
“What?” says Ryo.  
Honda speaks next. “Jonouchi may have gotten caught drawing lewd things on the white board.”  
“It wasn't lewd. It was just stupid doodles,” Jonouchi says.  
Yugi says, “Well, I mean that one girl you drew had pretty massive boobs.”  
“Hey now, there was nothing lewd about Princess Melons.”  
And Jonouchi watches Yugi as he says this, just as he drew the doodles with Yugi watching.

Sunshine gleams sugar-bright in the trees, the fragmented plots of green, the windows of the high school. The bell in the school's tower shimmers like a golden jewel.  
Yugi and his friends sit in the classroom for lunch. Anzu eats slowly and Yugi notices this. He notices the dim blue of her eyes. Jonouchi speaks with his mouth full.  
“I'm just gonna pretend I'm too sick to do it, if he's gonna be that way.”  
“I don't think that's a good idea, Jonouchi-kun,” Yugi says.  
“You probably just have bad work ethic,” Honda says.  
Jonouchi swallows his bite of sandwich. “Don't say that! You don't know what it's like working for some tight-ass. Guy's always pulling that kind of crap. It's ridiculous.” Of course he has no true intention of pretending to be sick. Jonouchi notes Anzu then. “Besides, I’m not the one playing dangerous here. You still playing Russian Roulette with that job of yours, Anzu?”  
“What?” It’s as if she’s been woken from a dream.  
Jonouchi reshuffles the question into something softer. “How’s your job going?”  
“Oh. Um, it’s fine,” she says dully. She pauses. “Actually, Mizushiro-sensei saw me there, but she hasn’t said anything.”  
“Aw, that’s cool,” Jonouchi says.  
And there’s a small part of Yugi that’s jealous, and there’s a small part of Yugi that understands. He understands Jonouchi’s energy and casual words are for his and Anzu’s sake. But-

“I think I’ll hang out at home today.” Again.  
“Oh, okay. That’s cool,” Jonouchi says.  
Clouds blossom like water lilies over the oceanic sky. Yugi begins to break off from his friend, towards home.  
“Yugi. You know I miss him too, right?”  
Yugi stops and looks back. Jonouchi’s face is soft, caring. A stray hair shimmers on the breeze. Yugi smiles weakly. “I know you do.”

Yugi walks home alone, and he’s really alone. The concrete glows like a moon and the leaves of the trees along the sidewalk seem iridescent in the sun. There are dried earthworms on the sidewalk. He hears the soft rev of cars and the sound fills his head. His limbs are heavy and he looks up.  
_I hope you’re happy there, Other Me…_

Yugi forces himself to wave at his grandfather through the shop window, and his grandfather waves in return. Yugi moves around to the side of the house and enters through the back.  
He moves to the make-shift study, not really thinking about it. He doesn’t want to think. It’s a small cozy place, with cool green walls and a lamp like chiseled white chocolate, and there’s the family desktop computer. Yugi logs in and the background of the monitor shifts to an image of space, the stars colored brilliant rainbow, and swimming in the stars is a cartoon woman in a black bikini, space boots, gloves, and a space helmet. Yugi opens the browser but can only stare at the spread of the page. A full minute passes. _I wonder…_ He loses the thought for a moment. _… I wonder how Kaiba-kun’s doing…_ He opens his email and types in Kaiba’s name. How did he get Kaiba-kun’s email anyway? _I know he won’t answer, but he must read them if he showed up at the desert. I’ll just let him know I’m here._

And it has been ten days.

.

Mokuba is surprised when the door to their home laboratory slides open but his nii-sama isn’t inside, and there’s a drop of relief as well. Instead Seto sits in a corner of the library, a thick textbook in his hands. The walls of the room are grey-blue and the curtains white. Potted bird-of-paradises nest beside each bookshelf. Seto’s eyes are like night as he reads the pages. The light of the world in the windows has faded to smeared indigo and puddled clouds.  
In truth this room isn’t the library but instead a book-filled sitting room. But Seto refuses to enter the house’s true library.  
“Whatcha reading, Nii-sama?” Mokuba asks as he enters the room.  
Seto shuts the book. “It’s nothing.” He sets the book on the small table beside his chair, stands and makes to leave the room.  
“Oh, hey, they’re set to begin construction on the space station,” Mokuba says.  
“Yes, I know.”  
Seto passes Mokuba and moves into the hallway. Mokuba turns after him.  
“They still want a press conference with you. Like, you in particular,” Mokuba says.  
“They’ll get one soon enough.”  
Mokuba watches Seto shrink away down the hall and then he goes to the book on the table. The book’s title reads, “Gods and Heroes: the Realm of Greek Mythology.”

Seto wanders through the hallway and decides to head back down towards the basement, to the laboratory. The dream flickers once inside the pulp of his head. Just a blink of black and gore.  
He stops moving.  
He thinks of the email Yugi had sent earlier in the day. How did Yugi get his email? “ _How are you doing?_ ” That was all it said. _Token garbage spiel…_  
He thinks about the time Tenma Yakou commandeered Kaiba Corporation’s skyscraper. The machine with Anzu’s comatose body trapped inside. That’s right. Yugi’s body and the Other Yugi’s body had been one in the same, and Yugi no doubt still carried the Other Yugi’s deck. Seto begins snickering, and then his voice lifts into a jagged glass cackle. _No, I’m not that terrible. Oh that is just evil._ His voice trails off.  
On top of the skyscraper, a violet glow reflected into the nighttime sky. The Other Yugi crouched down beside him, looking at him with gentle eyes, speaking in a gentle voice. “ _Kaiba… are you alright?_ ”  
_I… believed him. I actually believed him…! Disgusting._ A heat builds behind his eyes. The memory oozes and it doesn’t stop.  
“ _Kaiba._ ”  
“ _Kaiba! I see a road of battle that goes further than the eye can see!_ ”  
Seto clenches his teeth. He clenches them hard and it hurts. _Liar. Coward. Coward!_  
" _To trap me, I applaud you!_ "  
In that fractured moment, he slams his hand into the China vase on a table and it falls and it shatters and the sound chimes through the hallway like cold pristine music.  
“GODDAMN COWARD!”  
_He ran away! That bastard ran way! Coward! No! No, I won’t let you!_ He knows where the Millennium Puzzle is. _I will defeat you once and for all, Yugi!_  
“Nii-sama…?”  
Mokuba stares at his brother standing in the hall, pieces and dust of vase splashed across the floor.  
Seto turns his head to him, grinning, and his voice spins. “Mokuba, we’re going to make a few quick adjustments to that space station’s blueprints.”

.

Yugi sits on the bed of his bedroom, the grey and black checkerboard blanket spread beneath him. A mirror hangs on the door and a small ornate box marked by hieroglyphs sleeps on his desk. Floating dust sparkles under the skylight. He should be studying, but instead he sips a can of cola and watches the box television. Seto Kaiba dressed in a white suit speaks on the screen, an artist’s depiction of the proposed space station poised behind his head.  
“Not even the stars are the limit for Kaiba Corporation! Our solid vision holographic technology will allow us to build this cutting-edge marvel of art and human achievement faster than ever before imaginable. With this, we will grab hold of the future!”  
Yugi sips the can and lets the fizz dazzle his tongue. And he wonders if Kaiba-kun has read his email.

.

The feeling is a paradox, grey and sticky as ash. Lonely and wanting to be alone.

The back wall of the laboratory is encrusted with cables and they hum. Light is spectral and blue as it fluoresces in Seto’s eyes. The sci-fi door slides open and Mokuba enters the room.  
“I brought you a coffee,” he says as he approaches. He offers the black mug to Seto, the earthy aroma spiraling in the air.  
“Thank you,” Seto says as he takes it, the mug warm in his fingertips. He twists it and takes the now-freed handle, also warm but warm from Mokuba’s hand.  
“How’s it progressing?” Mokuba asks.  
Seto takes a sip before speaking. “It’s near completion and it’s proven safe on test animals. We’ll be opening positions for people to test it soon.” Seto’s eyes switch from Mokuba to the metallic pod tucked in the corner of the room, and then they return to the holographic screen. “Then it’s just a matter of waiting for a sign. A special pattern in the neural signals. Would you like to see?”  
Mokuba pauses. He notes the dark lines under Seto’s eyes. “Nah, I think I get the idea.”  
Mokuba turns and begins to make his exit.  
“Mokuba.” Seto’s voice is soft.  
Mokuba stops and glances back. Seto is looking at him and his eyes are tired. The cables hum.  
“… Thank you for the coffee,” Seto says.  
“Don’t mention it.”

The woman with bobbed hair sweeps the floor of the sitting room—the other sitting room. The Not Not-Library Sitting Room. The sweeping is a melody of gentle scrapes. Abstract paintings of blossoming white, red, and orange hang on the walls. Mokuba sits on a vanilla-white sofa with a laptop (or rather a thin tube which emits a hologram that looks like a laptop) and his own mug of coffee. The sugar he’d put in both mugs is equal. He takes a sip. The sweetness is almost invisible. On the laptop there’s a news story about how a father, mother, and daughter have vanished into thin air, leaving no leads, and leaving behind the family’s youngest son. It’s Domino’s third incident of disappearances in a month.  
Seto had looked so tired.  
_I thought maybe he wanted to be left alone, but… he wanted to show me something, and I left the room._  
“It’s not fair, is it?” Mokuba says to the air.  
The woman stops her sweeping, looks at him.  
“What Yugi did to Nii-sama.”  
She says nothing, but her eyes are warm and golden.  
“I… I’m gonna help him. He needs at least that, right?” Mokuba says.  
A small fleeting smile touches the woman’s face. “You’ve always been a good brother to him, Mokuba-obocchama.”  
Mokuba looks at her then. There’s a pause and Mokuba runs his fingers through his bangs.  
“… Hey, Himeko-san, would you cut my hair for me?”

.

The days and colors and atmosphere shift, become chillier. The world waves and shudders like a flag.

One morning Seto wakes to find he ejaculated in the night, which is unusual for him. He can’t remember the dream.

A test version of the Virtual Reality Duel Links System begins accepting test subjects.

The space station is fifty-percent constructed.

.

_I coup myself in my home laboratory to put the final adjustments to the test model._

_The moment of completion…! This is when I enter the Duel Links World myself… and rule as its king!_

“But… you can’t become king. Not ever.”

.

It was him. _It was him. He was there._  
Every muscle inside his body aches and his heart buzzes and floats. Mokuba had rushed home to him immediately, but in truth Seto hadn’t ever felt more alive than he felt in that moment. The whole world was clear and bright. _It was him. He was there._ He says it to himself over and over again. _It was him. He was there._  
“Maybe we should go to a doctor,” Mokuba had said.  
“I’m fine. It’s nothing.”  
_I’m not leaving this spot._  
It hurts to move but he can’t sleep. The pink stars of dizziness fill him. The shape of that man’s soul. That luminous king of death. _You won’t escape me, Yugi,_ he chuckles to himself in sweet delirium. He searches over the glittering orb of the tiny hologram planet, checking every space of the world’s neural signals over and over again, deep into morning.  
And Mokuba lies awake in his bedroom, watching the ceiling turn from grey to lighter grey.

_Yugi._

There was a memory of a shattered window, fractals and a body flung into the sky.

And in the morning when he was eight years old, when he took the knob of the door into his father’s bedroom and turned it.

In the desert. “He’s gone, Kaiba-kun,” the Surface Yugi had said, “We dueled and I won and”

_Yugi._

_Atem._

In the shower, water beads and streams over Seto’s skin and mixes with his dried sweat. _It was him. He was there._ Something swims inside him. He breathes deep. He feels himself throbbing. And he needs relief. At first he only holds himself. But that face. That voice.  
“ _Kaiba._ ”  
The hand moves but he isn’t thinking about it. And there’s something throbbing and he feels some smoldering jelly sensation washing through his nervous system. It feels poisonous and sweet. The Other Yugi’s face. His eyes. His lips. And Seto breathes deep. And soon it’s too much.  
The water cascades.  
And it sinks in just what the splat is on the shower wall, where his hand is, what he was thinking about. He rips his hand away.  
_No. No. No no no no no_

And it has been three months since Atem left the world.


	2. The Heart is a Catacomb

He stares at the holographic screen, the wreathing of the world’s neural signals glittering like a plume of fireflies, but inside the space of his head there’s only a dial tone. He wants to detach his hand.  
That man’s face.  
“ _Kaiba._ ”  
“Stop it.”  
The laboratory’s door slides open then, just as Seto has come to expect.  
“Nii-sama?” This morning, Mokuba’s voice is shyer.  
“Mokuba.” Seto can’t bring himself to say more. His joints still ache but everything inside is numb.  
“Are you feeling okay?” Mokuba asks.  
“I’m alright.”  
There’s a pause as the two brothers gauge each other.  
“So you’re okay? You don’t want to see a doctor just in case?”  
“I underestimated what the strain to my body would be, but I seem to be alright,” Seto says as he flexes his hand. His left hand, the clean hand. “Adjustments will need to be made to the prototype. I pushed it to the limit too soon. I acknowledge it became dangerous but a doctor isn’t necessary.”  
“Do you promise you’re okay?”  
The question hits Seto hard.  
“I’m alright, Mokuba. Have a good day at work.”  
He can tell the smile Mokuba shares is fake but he pretends it isn’t.  
“You have a good day too, Nii-sama.”  
After Mokuba leaves the house, Seto leaves the laboratory. He goes to his bedroom, swallows two sleeping pills, and finally allows himself to collapse.

The cityscape is grey, blotted with smeary light, and sleet pelts the black car. As Mokuba’s chauffeured to work inside, it’s as if he’s being washed out to sea.

Seto wakes up nineteen hours later, the feather-soft focus of his eyes slowly sharpening. His body feels tight like piano wire and he lies on top of the bedding in his clothing still. The room is dark. It’s the middle of the night again.  
He checks his phone and there are two messages for him. He had expected more. The first message is from Kaiba Corporation’s board of directors, a reproach of Seto entering the Duel Links when he did, as he did. The original plan was for it to be a publicity stunt. “ _This is not what we agree to._ ” “ _We kindly ask for an explanation._ ” The second message is also a kind of reproach, from one Sasuga-san, one of his leading scientists. A sort of fall out guy for the team of leading scientists and Seto can’t help but chuckle to himself. _You poor fool. Do you think any of the others would come to your defense if I were to discipline you for this message?_  
Was that swirling suffocating hole really the Netherworld he’d seen? Was it really the Other Yugi? Seto looks at his hand, the one he’d used for _that_. When was the last time he’d done something like that? An experiment once or twice however many years ago? And now he’d done it to the thought of a corpse. A man’s corpse. He pushes the thought away and his whole body feels like a dial tone.

He moves through the dark seascape of the house. He needs no light because he’s memorized the maze. He finds the door to Mokuba’s bedroom, gently opens it to peek inside but he can’t make anything out within the dark shapes. He shuts the door just as gently. _Moron, they’d have woken me if he didn’t get home safely._

Seto puts four slices of plain bread on a plate and brings the plate to the small table in the enclave off the kitchen, and the cabinets and the floor are white and sandstone. He prefers eating here, where the servants eat their meals, to eating in the dining room, though he won’t admit it. Chewing a minuscule bite, his eyes scan the kitchen and meet the door open to the darkness of the dining room.  
When he was younger, he’d have the occasional fantasy of setting fire to the mansion and only he and Mokuba would escape as the whole place burned to the ground. And then there were the times he’d had the same fantasy but no one escaped, not himself and not Mokuba. Seto quickly pulls out his phone to distract himself. He checks the notifications about the dig site in Egypt, the place where the Other Yugi sleeps, which he gained the right to desecrate roughly two weeks ago. A pile of paperwork and now rubble is beginning to be hauled away. And Seto finds it amusing how empty the word “sacred” is. Nothing is sacred if you throw enough money at it. He rests the phone with his hand on the table, stares at it blankly. _What am I doing…?_  
“ _Kaiba._ ”  
“Stop it.”

The sky in the windows becomes paler, pales to a watercolor grey. Overhead, the crystal plumage of the chandelier sparkles faintly inside the grey light. And Mokuba, wearing a pearly robe over his pajamas, wasn’t expecting to see his brother sitting at the empty expanse of the dining room table this morning but there he is.  
“Good morning, Mokuba,” Seto greets him, “I’ll be going to work with you from now on.”  
Standing there, Mokuba contemplates the words and then a small smile warms his face. And then the small smile becomes brighter because he can’t help it.

.

The boys trade in their slippers for boots and shoes at the shoe lockers, students shuffling in and out of the space. It’s Saturday so the school day has ended earlier. Yugi takes a grey-and-black-banded scarf, tucks it around his throat, and plucks the translucent umbrella from where he’d set it. Honda peeks out the windows as Yugi meets Jonouchi. The glacial sky threatens something between rain and snow. A streak of incandescence melts in the distance.  
“You heading home?” Jonouchi asks.  
“Yeah,” Yugi answers.  
“Alright, see you Monday then. Don’t get drenched now.”  
Yugi smiles bashfully. “Yeah, yeah…”  
As he turns away Honda quickly adds, “Later, Yugi.”  
“Yep, see you guys,” he replies with a twist of the head.  
He marches through the school’s entryway out into the world, chilled air painting his skin.  
“Yugi.”  
Yugi turns and takes pause as his eyes meet Anzu waiting beside the doors. She wears chocolate fold-over boots and a jacket the color of a marshmallow, and perched shut on her shoulder is a brilliantly red umbrella. Her eyes look at him. They’re clear, blue, and lovely.  
“Anzu.”  
She steps to him. “Yugi, do you mind if I walk home with you? I mean, up until it splits off towards my place anyway?”  
“Oh, um, sure.”

The trees are sparse, nude, and silvery; the colorless colors of the cement seem to tint everything. The two walk in near parallel, a meter or so between them. The crowd thins from them as they move away from the school. They don’t speak for the first minutes of the journey.  
“Ahh, it’s so chilly,” Yugi shudders, cutting into the silence.  
“Hm.”  
There’s more silence.  
And then Anzu speaks, her eyes kept forward. “You know, we haven’t… really talked as much since he left, have we?”  
“… Sorry,” Yugi says.  
“You don’t have to apologize. I get it. I’ve been quiet too.”  
“It’s not like I mean to pull away from everybody. I guess I just feel kind of zapped.”  
“I don’t think you’re pulling away. It’s natural to need some time.”  
Yugi looks over to her and his voice is gentle. “So how are you handling things...?”  
She chuffs softly. “I feel like _I’ve_ pulled away. It’s kind of why I wanted to walk with you. I kind of feel like I’ve lost my balance a little. But it has to be worse for you.”  
“I’m okay,” Yugi says. He pauses. “We all knew it was coming, so…”  
“Do you ever think about what it’d be like if he had won…?” Anzu asks.  
“What?”  
“Do you think about… if things had happened differently. Like, if you said something or done something differently.”  
Yugi stares.  
“Never mind.” She says it in almost a whisper.  
They cross a street together. The glass of the cityscape is a reflection of the sky. Yugi feels a single point of rain on his cheek or perhaps it’s a prick of ice.  
“Sometimes kids come into the game shop and ask for his autograph,” Yugi says.  
“His?”  
“The King of Games. I don’t really know what to do when it happens.”  
“You did beat him, Yugi.”  
A tumor blooms in Yugi’s throat but he swallows it. “Y-yeah...” He presses his cold fingers to their opposite wrists, his umbrella looped over his elbow, and changes the subject. “Oh, Kaiba Corporation wanted me to participate in the trial of this Duel Links game. I think it’s like virtual reality; but I had to turn them down.”  
Anzu says nothing to this.  
“Kaiba-kun seems to be keeping busy, with his space station and that game and everything. I think I heard he’s gonna build a new Kaiba Land in London too. I guess losing Atem hasn’t slowed him down at all.”  
Anzu spits, “Well I’m glad it’s so easy for him.”  
Yugi stops, and then Anzu stops. She doesn’t face Yugi.  
She mutters, “He didn’t even bother saying goodbye…”  
Yugi knows there’s more to it than that. He remembers the single twitch he saw on Kaiba-kun’s face as he explained Atem’s fate to him within Egypt. Yugi knows only he would’ve seen this twitch. But he doesn’t correct her. Anzu begins moving forward again and then so does Yugi. Tiny blots begin to blossom over the pavement. Yugi opens his umbrella but Anzu doesn’t open hers just yet. The rain is cold, light, and shimmery.  
Anzu speaks softly. “My parents wondered why I was so quiet all of a sudden. I didn’t know what to tell them at first… Eventually I told them a friend I met at all those tournaments had died. They didn’t… really know what to do. They asked me a bunch of questions at first, but then they let it be. My dad bought me a charm bracelet. He bought me things when Grandma died too…” She opens her umbrella then like red butterfly wings. The world around them hums. The pavement is half shaded with water now. “I lied and said he was hit by a car.”  
“Anzu…”  
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make it about me,” she says, a gentle tremor inside her voice.  
“No, it’s okay. I’ll listen.”  
She glances over to him and for a moment she weakly smiles. “I am starting to feel better now, actually. What about you?”  
And Yugi, weakly smiling back, says, “I don’t know.”  
They continue to walk together. He considers mentioning to her how his grandfather’s put out the Christmas decorations in the game shop. He considers inviting her to come see them with him. In the end he says nothing of it. And as the two split from each other, headed towards the warmth of their homes, the rain morphs into baubles of ice.

.

Petals of ice sink from the milky atmosphere like bits of the moon, and the world is made crystalline and new.  
Everything is numb inside of him, moving through his landscapes as if his body has no substance. He goes to work, he tinkers on his inventions, he tries to sleep. He and Mokuba are nearly silent on their drives between the office and home. (He did not discipline Sasuga-san. He dueled and clobbered some dunces from New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo in Duel Links as a publicity stunt. He felt nothing as he did so.) He isn’t sure why but he finds himself reading books on the afterlife in the various mythologies and religions of the world. And it’s all hogwash but he keeps reading. The only time he feels anything is in his daily ritual of checking on the progress at the dig site. To desecrate something holy, the hope of dragging something back from death, the hope of victory and dominating everything. Yes, that’s what it’s about: victory. And Mokuba watches _Die Hard_ in their home theater, eating a slice of Christmas cake the maid brought him. Her work done for the day, the maid watches a part of the movie as she leans against the doorframe into the theater even though she can’t understand English. They watch a man run barefoot through broken glass in order to survive.  
New Year’s comes. Seto and Mokuba are sent a card from Isono, wishing them happiness. And Seto Kaiba feels nothing.  
“Nii-sama, would you like to come watch the fireworks at the park with me?” Mokuba asks him, a humble attempt to reach him.  
Seto glances up from his holographic laptop and he speaks dully. “No, I’m fine. You go on ahead.”  
Mokuba leaves the mansion alone but for a chauffeur and bodyguard and a piece of Seto feels like garbage but he doesn’t want to move. He can’t decide whether it’s better to feel like garbage or better to feel nothing at all.  
And the days stretch on like miles in a fog.

Somehow this numbness is different. It’s bluer than the numbness he’d felt before, before he’d met _him_.

He wants to feel something. Progress at the space station is liquid quick and progress at the dig site runs slowly. Why are the stars so much easier to reach? Sitting at the table in the enclave of the kitchen, he swaps the page from his phone and pulls up an image of the Other Yugi, taken in honor of his victory at Battle City. He stands proudly against the skyline. _You didn’t deserve that title. Pathetic coward. I’ll defeat you, Yugi, and dominate everything._ And for a flicker of a moment Seto’s heart doesn’t feel like a crumbling shell. The Other Yugi’s eyes stare at the camera, stare at him, and it happens all at once. The colors of his eyes, luminous violet and ruby, melt some piece of Seto’s heart and there’s the violent rush of memory and the understanding that this man is dead now, that he chose to die. In a burst Seto hurls the phone at the wall, hurling his arm hard enough to hurt. Seto’s breath races. The phone crashes to the floor and the image of that man glows and burns like an ember.

.

The house was quaint and it smelled like tea leaves but it wasn‘t theirs, and Mokuba was three years old and sobbing and it was a violent thrashing sob.  
“I-I want to go home!” he cried, his face pink and scrunched, his tiny hands rubbing his eyes, “I want to go h-hooome!”  
And a snowdrop of a woman with mauve eyes and greying brown hair tied into a bun trembled, turned away to the corner as she bleated in a cracking voice, “Please shut up-! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I can’t take this! Please! Please be quiet! Please-!” Mokuba’s sobs bellowed. She turned to Seto curled silently on the sofa. “Do something!” she pleaded hysterically, her hands moving jagged through the air.  
Seto stumbled from the sofa and gently took Mokuba’s wrist. “Come on, let’s go, Mokuba.”  
And Mokuba sobbed but he followed his brother out into the peach light of evening and their hands were warm together. It was as if Seto’s heart pumped sludge but he rubbed his little brother’s head and let him cry. He let that sadness escape from his lungs and fill the world.  
Later, after Mokuba had calmed, Seto came to the woman’s bedroom and he pushed open the door softly. “Grandma…?”  
And she was curled over her desk, a limp and trembling weed, and from that place he could hear her rapid breaths and the small moan and her devastated words.  
“You weren’t supposed to die…”


	3. Wings that Won't Fly

There was the opal-brilliance of sunshine and the seawater dazzled like blue fire. He stared down at the ruination of that isle and smoke spilled into the air and tainted the purity of blue sky. Then from his jet, his eyes met the eyes of another. Eyes like violet planets, standing on the balcony of the blimp, and beyond that person there was only sky and water. The person looked at him warmly, as if he was a friend, and for the first time in the storm of his life he felt as if everything was right in the world. It was beautiful. Seto smiled and lifted his hand to salute that person. That beautiful beautiful person.

“—Oh! Excuse me, Seto-sama.” The maid’s words are hushed and she swiftly and gently closes the bedroom door.  
Seto lies on the bed, over top the blanket, and the mint-blue light of winter stains the space of the room, spilling in from the windows. The warmth of the memory floating inside his body decomposes. He knew half a sleeping pill wouldn’t be enough to knock him out. Instead his body feels a strange pressure of gravity and his eyes play tricks on him. The patterns on the walls move, painted ivy crawling slowly like centipedes. In this state his heart can’t beat so fast. His eyes float to the door. The maid, that was her, the one who tended to his body while his mind was wandering somewhere in the dark. Bathing him. Changing his catheter. His hand limply moves to cup his groin and he almost snickers. Yes, that’s right. Somebody else has already touched him here.  
A memory of violet eyes and the ocean, and Seto pauses and then he pulls his hand away to rest back on the blanket.

Mokuba sits on the vanilla-white sofa with his silver tube of a laptop, squares of light and data buoyant before his face. He uses two fingers to swipe between pages. He takes an audible breath.  
“Shit. Crap…” His voice can barely be heard by the maid pausing in the doorway and he doesn’t notice her standing there.  
Mokuba presses his fingers to his forehead with clenched eyes and then begins to type on the projected keyboard. Snow sinks over the frosty dreamland beyond the picture window adjacent to the sofa. Mokuba’s image mingles in the glass. Typing and re-reading. He hears two soft clicks. His lilac-grey eyes meet the maid’s golden ones.  
“Pardon me, sir. I just thought you might need a snack break.” Her smile is subdued and she wears pale pink pearl earrings. On the coffee table rest a steaming black mug and a triangular plate offering two cookies.  
“What’s this?” he asks.  
She gives a subtle shrug. “Hot cocoa and butter cookies.”  
Mokuba returns to typing. “Yeah, thanks,” he mutters.  
The maid watches the boy for a moment, the flutter of his fingers, his eyes so fixed to the projection, and then the maid turns and she leaves the room.  
Typing and typing, re-reading. Mokuba sighs as he throws his head back. _Such a stupid mistake…_ He lets his head rest against the sofa, feels the weight of his heartbeat. He stares into the ceiling for a moment and then rolls his head to look through the window, to look at the falling snow. In the blue of night it’s as if the constellations are falling. He watches for several minutes.  
_… It’ll be okay. We’ll get the Other Yugi back and things will be okay._ He looks back to the mug and plate. And then he sits upright and he takes one of the cookies.

It had been before the maid took two cookies from her private pantry; it had been before Seto swallowed half a sleeping pill.  
Seto moved like a thundercloud from out of the kitchen. _He’s dead! He’s useless! I--_ As he tried to wipe away the horrible flutter inside his chest, a voice emerged from deep within his memories.  
“ _You don’t want to be influenced by people of that kind._ ”  
A boiling surge spiked through his bloodstream and Seto slammed his hand into the nearest object it could find. He felt the firecracker sting on his skin at the impact and only then did he see what he’d struck. On the floor was a small marble sculpture of the Blue Eyes White Dragon, toppled to her side, her left wing snapped off.  
Seto found the maid and he spoke calmly. “Clean that up before Mokuba sees and have it taken for repairs.”  
“As you say, Seto-sama.”  
And the maid went to gather up the fragments and she didn’t notice Mokuba standing there, watching from the end of the hallway.

.

The muted television flickers in the dark space of his bedroom. Yugi wipes himself with a bundle of tissues. The tape isn’t over yet and the woman continues to work her cherry lips over a pixelated phallus. Yugi thinks about how Anzu is prettier than the woman in the video. Maybe a thought that others are prettier too flickers inside his head or maybe it doesn’t. He wishes there was more tenderness in the pornography Jonouchi loaned him. That the man’s hand might gently cup the woman’s face, that he might kiss her softly once she finishes him.  
During these sessions, Atem had always faded away, held in his soul room, letting Yugi have his privacy. There were many circumstances when Atem would fade away and give Yugi privacy. But this new silence that will spread out for the rest of his life, it’s something that’s only now settling inside Yugi, deep as a permafrost in his bones.  
_I wonder what he was thinking when I was doing this…? Or maybe I should’ve offered to let him watch alone sometime…_

He notices the little details in the morning. The technicolor of the traffic lights. The silver light captured inside the icicles. The ice cream cone charm with neon beads dangling from Anzu’s school bag and how her earbuds play French pop songs. The way Jonouchi smells faintly of cigarette smoke, a hint of his on-and-off habit from his days with Hirutani. How in the shoe locker room, Ryo pulls his face closer to the spider scurrying over the coffee-colored metal, murmuring softly to the creature, “Hello little friend. Are you staying safe from the cold in here?”

“My sister got my nephew a hamster for his birthday and I guess he’s been excited about that.”  
“Your nephew? Is it Jouji-chan?” Anzu asks Honda before taking a sip of bottled green tea.  
“Yeah. I guess he named it Roshi. I haven’t seen it yet but it’s one of those little dwarf ones.”  
“Kind of young for a pet, isn’t he?” Jonouchi says.  
“Nee-san will probably be the one to actually take care of it. But she seemed really happy about how much he liked his gift.”  
“What if he squishes it?” Jonouchi asks with a mouthful of yakisoba.  
“Come on, don’t say that,” Anzu says.  
Honda adds, “Jouji apparently also wants me to take him to Kaiba Land again.”  
Jonouchi blinks. “Um, did I hear you right?”  
“He’s nuts,” Honda groans.  
“So you gonna take him?” Jonouchi asks.  
“Eeeh. Isn’t a new hamster enough?”  
“Probably not,” Jonouchi says.  
They sit together in the classroom: Honda, Jonouchi, Anzu, Ryo, and Yugi. Other students sit in other corners of the room. The light from the windows is cool and tin-hued, reflected greenly off the floor.  
“My mom had a fish tank when I was little, filled with these little fish that had like a red and blue fluorescent streak. Those are the only pets we’ve ever had,” Anzu says, “The tank was kind of too small though.”  
There’s a lull in the conversation, everyone taking sips and bites.  
“They’re gonna rotate out the Egyptian Exhibit next month,” Ryo says suddenly.  
And the motion of the group stops, Jonouchi slowly lowering the melon Ramune soda in his hand.  
“I’m sorry for mentioning it,” Ryo says with his eyes cast down, picking at his cuticles.  
“No, it’s okay,” Yugi tells him.  
But no one is eager to talk about it.  
“… Do you… want to visit it before it goes?” Jonouchi finally asks to no one in particular.  
“I don’t know,” Yugi exhales.  
“You don’t need to decide right now. It can wait,” Anzu tells him softly.  
Yugi gently smiles. “You’ve been more talkative lately, Anzu.”  
She gently smiles back.  
“… I-I think…” Ryo says quietly still picking at his hands and the group looks to him. “I mean, there’s evidence the Other Yugi existed. He was really really real… That’s why I mentioned it is all.”  
“Bakura-kun…” Yugi says.  
“Of course he was real!” Jonouchi grunts and Anzu flicks her finger against his cheek. “What, Anzu? I- … Oh…” He catches on.  
“The Other Bakura was real too, we all met him. Not a nice guy,” Honda assures him.  
Ryo gives a pale smile and doesn’t lift his face. “I’m glad he’s gone.”  
The others let it sit and no one knows where to go from there. One of the girls in the trio of girls in the corner of the classroom giggles to something her friends said.  
“Hey,” Yugi finally says in a mild voice, “Maybe we could all have a movie night at my place this weekend.”  
“You don’t have to force yourself, Yugi,” Jonouchi tells him.  
“No, I want to have a movie night.”  
With a drop of realization, Jonouchi smiles wistfully and his eyes warm. “Well alright then.”

.

A man in a black suit opens the car door for Seto while Mokuba opens his own door. There’s a bruise on the palm of Seto’s hand. The clouds churn above them, whipped and foaming like an upside-down sea. The brothers walk between the stone dragons to the building of glass and steel and reflected clouds, cut sharp as a diamond, and Seto remembers the spot, the sight of it. Only his limbs were recognizable, his head and torso burst open like balloons filled with red jelly, the mess of entrails like chunks of dark fruit. Seto blinks. What is there now is only the broken body of a tiny dead bird, its neck snapped from flying into the fake sky. And there’s a spare thought with no pity of just how many birds must have struck this building since its genesis.

Beyond the glass walls surrounding him is city and sky. Everything in his office is polished to a shine and his desk is naked but for a projector. Seto checks over his emails. One is from some nobody adviser suggesting he undergo high-G training in a centrifuge which Seto swiftly ignores. The other is from Isono.  
“ _We have checked and re-checked every participate and we regret to inform you we have been unable to recognize the child who broke into your home. We believe she snuck into the program. I will see to an improvement in the Kaiba Corporation Domino Headquarters security team immediately._ ” The email goes on rambling.  
Seto hadn’t really thought to look into who that girl was, not in the immediate weeks following her appearance. He didn’t really care all that much. The recordings from his home showed her glitching in and out of existence. _She knew where I was trying to go…_  
It doesn’t matter anymore. That shimmering phantom with the familiar face at the center of infinite darkness: it doesn’t matter where he is.  
All that’s left is a waiting game. Cold blue waiting.

Kaiba Corporation's skyscraper stood on the cerulean skyline and the heart of the city pumped with the blood and passion of duelists. He walked side by side with that man. Maybe they bumped elbows once or twice. The Other Yugi had bizarre hair marked with blonde and he wore his blue jacket like a cape. And he was short. How was it Seto had never noticed how short the Other Yugi was before? But he had a radiant voice and over his head hovered the invisible crown of the Duel King. Another robed person creeped out from the shadows, lifting his duel disk as a declaration of challenge.  
“Let me take this one, Kaiba.”  
“I don’t need your help, Yugi.”  
The Other Yugi smirked and his eyes gleamed fire-bright. “You’ll give away all your strategies to me if you keep dueling them.”  
Seto smirked in return. “It’s only fair since I’ve been studying your every move during this tournament.”  
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Kaiba. And I know you can take him down quickly.”  
Seto nodded to the Other Yugi and stepped forward to the Ghoul.  
Holographic creatures crashed and glittered and pulsed. The Other Yugi watched as Seto moved.  
“You’re finished!” Seto shouted and he glanced over to make sure the Other Yugi was watching him, to see the eyes that were gazing back.  
The Ghoul’s facedown card was an obvious bluff and Seto’s Kaiser Glider struck the final blow in a blaze of light and steam.  
“It was a mistake for someone as pathetic and sniveling as you to ever believe you stood a chance against someone like me,” Seto sneered.  
The Other Yugi was already moving on from the spot, past the devastated Ghoul.  
“Yugi!” Seto blurt and the Other Yugi stopped, looked back to him, and Seto breathed in the feeling of tethering him for just this moment.  
“Don’t be so eager to rush off without me.”

“Nii-sama.”  
Seto opens his eyes and sees the translucent turquoise projection of his younger brother.  
“I’ll meet you at the boardroom for the two o’clock meeting, alright?” Mokuba says, “It sounds like the directors have arrived a little early so I’m going to meet with them.”  
“You do that, Mokuba,” Seto says, “I’ll be there shortly.”  
“Okay. I’ll see you there.” And the hologram--the image of Mokuba--melts away.  
Seto rubs his eyes. His hand hurts. _Mokuba._ He gathers his silver-white trench coat from its stand, wraps it to his body. As he moves from the office he counts the days it’s been since he first decided to reclaim the Other Yugi for the mortal world. He counts the weeks.  
He counts them so he doesn’t have to count all the ways he’s failed, all the ways he’ll continue to fail.

And it has been four months since Atem left the world.

Two middle-aged business men, one in a dark grey suit and one in a light grey suit, stand in the hallway. One wall is squares of maple wood set between thin stainless steel bands and the other wall is painted ivory. The lights in the ceiling are glowing white cubes, their edges colored black. The men stare at a poster hung near the glass doors into the boardroom. Mokuba in his pale suit approaches them.  
“Mokuba-sama!” one of the men greets warmly. He turns back to the poster and briefly lifts a finger to point. “We were enjoying your advertisement.”  
A tulip of a woman offers a floating Kaiba Corporation laptop and from the silver tube bursts colors, constellations, goldfish, and olive blossoms. The woman’s face is a lovely oval and she wears a tight white and pink dress, standing in such a way as to accentuate her body’s curves.  
“I think we ran that ad last quarter,” Mokuba says.  
“She’s a hot little thing. I guess you’re too young to understand,” he snickers.  
“Nah, she’s cute,” Mokuba says kindly, though inside his head he grumbles, _I’m a thirteen-year-old boy. Do you really think I’m not masturbating every other night?_


End file.
